Overview

Current Professional/Research Interests: As a stage director, my creative and research interests revolve around the transformational qualities of theatre where communities may be changed or formed through their participation. I am drawn to creating new work and to exploring new potentials for theatre to engage across cultures. I produce performances using a highly collaborative and physically oriented process and hold to the idea that theatre should be made in such a way that it celebrates the intimate, visceral environment of the live stage.

Recent Creative Work:This past summer, I participated in a physical theatre residency at the historic forest base of Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre in Brzezinka, Poland, where I worked alongside members of Studio Matejka, a physical theater research and performance ensemble, and 18 other artists from around the globe to explore physical modes of actor training and performance.

In 2012, I returned to the U.S. after teaching and directing in China with the U.S. Peace Corps at Guizhou University. While in China, I directed cross-cultural productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. The latter production was invited to perform as part of the Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival in Hong Kong.

As producing artistic director at Square Top Repertory Theatre, based in the Four Corners region of the U.S., I focused much of the theatre’s efforts on new play development. In 2010, I worked with playwright Damon Falke to produce and tour the premier of The Sun is in the West. During the spring of 2014, I will produce the premier of Falke’s newest piece Now At the Uncertain Hour in association with North Country Public Radio and Shechem Press. Please visit my website (www.cpepiton.com) to read more about this and other current projects and presentations.

Personal Interests: When I’m not teaching or directing a show, I would just as soon be outdoors. I love all things somehow related to hiking, backpacking, skiing, snowshoeing, and traveling somewhere in the world to do some of that outdoors living.